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Students hope to be heard at Town Hall on Douglas shooting

Students hope to be heard at Town Hall on Douglas shooting

Attendees arrive at the BB&T Center in Sunrise for the CNN town hall "Stand Up: The Students of Stoneman Douglas Demand Action" on Wednesday, Feb. 21. (Hal Habib / The Palm Beach Post)

SUNRISE

Horace Hamm came to the CNN Town Hall meeting Wednesday night hoping to hear reasons no parent will ever have to go through what he endured when the shooting started at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland.

Hamm had started to doze off on his cross-country flight a week ago when he looked at his phone to find 12 consecutive texts from his daughter, Milan, a Douglas senior.

She was OK, but he didn’t know that for a half-hour as he wrestled with airplane wi-fi. And because he was on jetBlue, he began monitoring coverage on CNN, only to learn the gunman was still on the loose — so his worrying resumed.

Wednesday night, Horace, along with Milan, wife Georgette and son Marc’anthony, entered the BB&T Center among an expected crowd of 7,000 for “Stand Up: The Students of Stoneman Douglas Demand Action,” a CNN two-hour special hosted by Jake Tapper.

The attendance equated to roughly one-fourth of the population of Parkland.

Among the guests were Sen. Marco Rubio (R.-Fla.), Sen. Bill Nelson (D.-Fla.), Rep. Ted Deutch (D.-Fla) and Dana Loesch, national spokesman for the National Rifle Association.

“My biggest hope is that they’re going to listen to our kids, they’ll listen to the voices and really take into consideration what they’re saying because this has been truly traumatic,” Horace Hamm said of legislators. “As a parent, I would not want anyone to go through what I went through. Can you imagine the 17 families?”

That was a reference to the 17 students and faculty members killed by the shooter.

The tragedy sparked national dialogue over how to prevent more school shootings, with the students themselves steering the narrative.

“It’s been just amazing to see these people I’ve grown with and gone to school with for four years to come out and use their voices,” said Jennifer Fay, a Douglas senior. “It’s as though they were made for this.”

The students are speaking loudly, but the Town Hall got off to a fiery start when Rubio was confronted by Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter, Jaime, was killed in the rampage.

“Your comments this week, and those of our president, have been pathetically weak,” Guttenberg told Rubio as loud applause broke out.

Sybille Desormes (left) and Audrey Ramos, juniors at Coral Glades High in Coral Springs, attend the CNN town hall "Stand Up: The Students of Stoneman Douglas Demand Action" at the BB&T Center in Sunrise on Wednesday, Feb. 21. (Hal Habib / The Palm Beach Post)

Guttenberg challenged Rubio to say guns are the problem. Rubio pointed out that often, proposed laws to ban the AR-15, which was used at Douglas, only pushes criminals toward one of the hundreds of other semiautomatic weapons that could do equal damage. Rubio challenged Deutch to say he’s in favor of banning every gun that can do what the AR-15 can. “You bet I am,” Deutch said, calling them “weapons of war.”

Rubio drew applause when he said he originally hadn’t supported banning magazine clips but is reconsidering. He believes it may have saved “three or four people” at Douglas.

Tapper asked Nelson if Democrats made a mistake in not making gun legislation a priority when they controlled Washington. “Yes,” Nelson said.

Rubio was targeted by Cameron Kasky, a Douglas junior, who asked the senator, who has received $3.3 million in campaign donations from the NRA, if he would stop accepting money from that group. Rubio said special-interest groups don’t influence him with money.

Before the Town Hall, Regina Sanchez, a Douglas freshman, expressed was skepticism that her voice would be heard.

Regina Sanchez, a Douglas freshman, was skeptical on whether her voice will be heard.

“Do they care about us? Because they don’t look like they care about us,” Sanchez said. “They don’t want to change the law. We want to be safe. And they don’t care.”

Lawmakers are wrestling with the subject because it involves gun control.

“I want to hear that there is hope to apply some regulation,” said Gerardo Sanchez, a Douglas senior and Regina’s brother. “I feel that Florida is one of the easiest states to get a gun. And you know, how come a 19-year-old kid can get a gun?”

The Douglas shooter is 19.

A group of students from Coral Glades High in Coral Springs — neighboring Douglas High — came to the arena without tickets but hoping to spread the word about #makeussafe, their nonpartisan efforts to promote school safety. Because today, they said, they feel anything but safe on campus.

“The environment, it’s not the same,” said Audrey Ramos, a Glades High junior. “Kids are scared to go to the bathroom alone and kids are scared to just be in the hallways. Hallways are dead.”

Cortney Evans, a Glades High senior, added, “Before this happened, you got out to the hallway, you’d see four or five of your friends. And now kids are scared to go to the hallways at all during classes.”

The students pointed to the resolve of students around the country, staging walkouts and demanding politicians take action. There is talk, they agreed, of making the walkouts a weekly occurrence until something changes.

There’s also talk, they said, of a widespread walkout lasting indefinitely until their voices are heard. Some classmates have talked about starting home-schooling.

The Coral Glades students chatted with attendees as they entered the arena, with both sides dressed alike: in maroon colors of Douglas High. The Glades students wore shirts saying #MSDStrong, setting aside any possible neighborhood rivalries.

The same applies to Coral Springs High. Christine Keller, a senior at Springs, was among those who walked to Douglas High this week.

“It took us two hours to walk, about 6 miles,” Keller said. “It was the most powerful thing I’ve ever done in my life.”